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Justin Frankel Reveals Life After Winamp
Joseph Gelinas writes "Speaking out for the first time on life after AOL/Nullsoft, Winamp creator Justin Frankel sat down with BetaNews to discuss his new endeavors. Starting a new company called Cockos, Frankel is leaving behind the mass market for his musical roots, but hints at revolutionary -- and presumably controversial -- things to come."
Have you seen the name of their products?
Here's a packet sniffer called Assniffer.
Other "cool" innovations - the PHP source for their page generation! With (omgzzss11!1one) AUTO-CENTERING OF TEXT!
Good thing their front page says they're developing "technologies that some people might find interesting. Maybe."
But they should've added, "...if they snicker at every obnoxious, grade-school dick joke" since that's apparently the theme they've chosen for this crap.
Obviously someone who never listened to the WinAmp sample file modded the above message down.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
After reading TFA and following a few links, I came to this page: http://www.betanews.com/article/Death_Knell_Sounds _for_Nullsoft_Winamp/1100111204 and encountered the stinging accusation that Frankel may have not been the original inventor of Winamp in a comment. I wonder if this has any truth to it? Here is the comment verbatim:
"When you read this, please understand, that this is by any means no complain, but expression of my emotions trying to bring some truth to the internet community about events that took place which have been hidden from public. Although, this may read as some sort of conspiracy, this is a true story, how history really happened.
Let me begin stating that my life for the past 5 years was hell.
Truth is, Justin didn't invent WinAmp. Actually Justin Frankel is a liar, but he paid me (Dmitry Boldyrev) off to not say anything. The reason why I had to take the gag and not bring the case, which I intended to do at the time, was because I was poisoned (but who did it? hmmmmmm good question, I am still trying to figure that one out) and couldn't deal with court proceedings. For the past five years I was in hawaii trying to deal with the poison, breathing it out of my body. Try day long meditations, Mr Frankel, maybe it will bring you a better understanding of the world surrounding you. Or I guess you're not interested in the truth, the money has blinded you completely. Sure, having few millions in the trust account you probably have a different view on the world.
I would like to share what I have done with the money that I received from the miniscule settlement that I received.
1) Started a vegan restaurant in Hawaii, which was rated #1 by PeTA this year
2) Helped many musicians
What do you have to show for your millions, Mr Frankel? Yes, we've heard about your love for cars. Is this best you can do? Lets not mention your guitar playing skills, because I dont know how many people are laughing behind your back.
Before I begin, I'd like to introduce the reader to the fact that I am very sad for this country, and result of its so called elections. It just shows to me that democracy isn't happening here. The result of my history of events that took place in my life, I am starting to question, the very reason why AOL bought WinAmp. My realization led me to believe that AOL needed WinAmp to establish control over media on the internet, music media and radio media in particular. I've met a guy (right hand man of Steve Case @ AOL) Dave Cole?, nice guy actually. Interesting, at his lecture he kept referring to people as software, maybe he needs a break from his work and learn to understand people on more personal level.
As I was so closely involved, nobody even asked me about Nullsoft sale to AOL. I guess they never considered me anything more than a stupid russian who we can f*** over as much as possible. But personally, I always considered myself a 50% cofounder of Nullsoft (any thoughts on this, Mr Frankel?). So is this the American tactic that we keep hearing about, invite people from other countries, rip off their ideas, enslave them, use their ideas and talant to make money, and then take it off shores to further enslave everyone around? Long live WTO?
So, now to the story: what TRUELY happened with the whole WinAmp thing.
I met Justin Frankel at CADE lab at University of Utah in mid 1997 where we both attended engineering school. He was at the time interested in computer graphics, working on Plush 3d gfx engine. Goruraud shading, nothing too fancy. I guess it was quite fast. I was an old-skool music demo coder person. In 1989 I discovered Scream Tracker for PC, which inspired me to write music software, and ever since I've been amazed by computer music, which led me to creation of first gui mp3 player-MacAmp. Beforehand, I wrote many other music-players (for PC and Mac), like MacMik